a little bit and tell you how I'm proposing that we do this class. I got into studying the Shurangama Sutra, and I actually have never read it. I'm in the middle of it, reading it myself. And I wanted to do a class on the Shurangama Sutra so that I would read the rest of it, basically. So, and the reason why I started studying it was because in my study of the Blue Cliff Record, it kept coming up over and over again. Some of the... There's a couple of... There's actually two cases that are of the Blue Cliff Record that are quotations. The cases themselves are quotations from the Shurangama Sutra, and the one that you probably all know about, even if you don't know about it, is the one about the Sixteen Bodhisattvas

[01:03]

in the bath. Because here, and also in Tassajara, there's a picture in front of the bathhouse of Sixteen Bodhisattvas in the bath. And that is an incident from the Shurangama Sutra where Sixteen Bodhisattvas enter the bath, and when they actually pay attention to the sensation of water on their skin, they become awakened as they enter the bath. And it's one of the cases of the Blue Cliff Record. And there's also Case 94 in the Blue Cliff Record, and it's just a quotation from the Shurangama Sutra. But apart from those two cases, there are numerous other occasions in the Blue Cliff Record where the Shurangama Sutra is mentioned in a commentary or referred to by different masters. And if you study the records of the masters, there's a number of cases where such-and-such a master was enlightened when he was reading the Shurangama Sutra.

[02:04]

So being a hopeful type myself, I thought I should read the sutra with high hopes that maybe I too would be touched by the Buddha in the course of my doing it. So far I've had no luck, but still I keep trying. But the Shurangama Sutra is, despite all these references to it, it's not a very high-class sutra really. It's a little confused, and it's almost certainly, although in the days when the ancient Chan masters were reading it, they probably accepted that it was a bona fide sutra written in Sanskrit, translated into Chinese, as all the sutras were. But it's now clear to scholars that this is not the case, that the Shurangama Sutra is a spurious sutra composed in China. And you can tell right away, it's actually, well, I'm unfortunately irreverent, but to

[03:15]

me it seems really clear when you read it, that it's a Chinese imitation of the Indian style of protracted, logical exposition of Buddhist ideas, and it's just a weird, the way that it sounds is very weird and strange. So you can tell right away that that's the case. And also the whole burden of the sutra is the exposition of this mantra, the Shurangama mantra, which is used in some of our ceremonies, our more esoteric ceremonies. So it's an important part of our tradition. Dharma Transmission Ceremonies, some of them.

[04:16]

It's a very funny premise. Oh, so the only English version of the sutra, there's two English versions of the sutra. The one that I've been reading is seven volumes long, by Master Hua, the great Chinese master who lived in California and started the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Talmadge, and what's the name of that temple in San Francisco? Gold Mountain. Gold Mountain Monastery, and has a lot of Western successors he's passed on. And he, the sutra is not as long as seven volumes, but Master Hua, whenever he translated the sutra, he didn't translate the sutra and leave it at that, he would always interpolate his own commentaries. So of the seven volumes, I don't know how many words are actually, the sutra's probably one big volume, and the rest of it is all his commentary.

[05:24]

But his commentary is always really interesting, because he tells, he's full of Chinese Buddhist legends and lore, and there's a lot of fascinating stuff that you find out. But he's a very old-fashioned kind of a fellow, and his point of view is very sort of, it's a mixture of folk tales, outrageous humor, and total literalistic orthodoxy. It's a kind of unbeatable combination, so it's quite fun to read. The other translation is by Charles Luke, and I started reading that one when I first started studying the sutra, and I couldn't make head or tail out of it. It turns out that it's just an absolutely terrible translation, to the point where, I mean, I thought, well, you know, how bad can it be? You can always kind of get something out of it. But it was so bad that it wasn't worth reading, so I would not recommend that you read that one. Probably the library has both the seven volume and the one volume, but because of the fact

[06:30]

that, you know, it would have been nice, it would have been really nice if Master Hua would have given the complete text of the sutra, and then, after that, commented on it, then we could Xerox, you know, pages. But he didn't do that. There'll be one paragraph, and then nine pages of commentary, and then another paragraph, and another ten pages of commentary, and it would be too much to sort of splice together all this. So, we're sort of stuck. Basically, we have a class without really having a text that you can study. However, since the sutra itself, by its nature, is so sort of mind-bogglingly impossible to read, even at its best, it's probably not that bad that we can't study the text. It's probably better off. So, it's dubious, actually, whether this is a good idea. What I'm coming around to telling you is that it's dubious whether this is a good idea to try to have a class on the Shurangama Sutra under the circumstances, but we'll find out

[07:34]

in the course of doing it, whether we are wasting our time or doing something that's not worth doing. But we'll try, and I'm sure there'll be some virtue in it. So, yes? There's a partial translation in the Buddhist Bible, too. Oh, is there? Oh, I didn't know that. Who did he work with? Oh. What's the name of the book? The Buddhist Bible? The Buddhist Bible, Dwight Goddard and Bhikshu Y. Tao. Oh. Y. Tao. I didn't know that. But it's from 1935. Uh-huh. I haven't seen it. I didn't know that this was there. And I think the seven volumes cost $60. Yeah. If anyone was interested in ordering it, I have the phone number. Yeah, it's incredibly cheap. Seven volumes for $60, yeah. But, like I say, this is for, like, hardcore, I don't know what you call it, lunatic Buddhists

[08:36]

or something. This is a mind-only school text, I should mention. And so it's a, basically, a lot of it is programmatic. In other words, in the sutra, the Buddha will make a point. So it's about the nature of mind. So actually, the teaching of the sutra is sublimely profound and worth contemplating. But to a great extent, it's programmatic. In other words, the Buddha will make a point about, he'll make a particular point about the senses. And then there'll be many, many pages repeating the same material for the eyes. Then there'll be maybe 10 pages on the eyes, 10 pages on the ears, 10 pages on the nose. And it's all virtually the same thing, you know. Going through all the senses, all the sense objects, and then the 18 dhatus, one thing

[09:37]

after another like that. However, it is, I find finding it an enormously helpful text for my understanding and practice because it is, in a way, the doctrine of the mind-only school, which is, as I said earlier, since the Zen masters studied the Shurangama Sutra, it's one of the philosophical underpinnings of Zen. And so you can understand the Zen literature and the koans much better if you appreciate the mind-only doctrines. And they are, by their very nature, very difficult to speak about and understand because they're speaking about the nature of mind, which has a bigger space and a bigger container than subject-object mind, discriminative mind.

[10:39]

And by its nature, that kind of thinking is not available to the discriminative mind. So it's kind of a yogic, anti-logical, the sutra is taking you through a yogic process of undoing, more or less, undoing all of your sort of thinking and leaving you to recognize that the nature of mind must be something beyond your kin. But all this is sort of done with a very systematic, logical kind of way of speaking, which you'll see in a minute. But the original, the premise of the sutra, and what I'm going to do here is, I've read through the first four volumes. So what I'm going to do is, in rapid order, try to catch you up, read some of the highlights

[11:41]

and talk a little bit about what has happened in the first volumes. And then, that'll take maybe more than one week, more than one class, and then we'll go on from there. And I'll just, each week, read and present some highlights of what I've read. And those of you who can get a hold of the text and want to read, you can certainly also. You'll know where we are each week. The premise of the sutra is very interesting. The scene is set, as always, in the sutras, with a retinue of disciples around, listening to the teaching. But then, where is Ananda? Like, what's wrong? Where is he? How come he's not here? What happened? And Ananda is absent, and so they're wondering what happened to him. And it turned out that Ananda was just about on the verge of doing the worst thing that you could possibly do,

[12:48]

if you're a Buddhist monk, which is, he was about to jump into the sack with a prostitute. This is what happens in the beginning of the sutra. And the reason why he was doing this is because he was overcome by a powerful mantra that was a spell that was placed upon him by the mother. This prostitute was in love with him and wanted to marry him, so she got her mother, who was a magician of some kind, to put a spell on Ananda so that he didn't know whether he was coming or going. And the Buddha, of course, saw that this was happening and immediately sent Manjushri, who had a counter-mantra, which was the Shurangama mantra, which blew away the lady's magic and saved Ananda from what would have been considered a fate worse than death. So, this is what the Buddha said to Ananda, I see that your understanding is quite limited, Ananda.

[13:50]

Otherwise, you would have been able to easily blow away this magic and overcome this problem. So now I'm going to teach you the nature of mind, so that you understand. And I remember in Tassajara, this last practice period, we were talking about different things. One of them was the Shurangama Sutra, but another one was the women disciples of Buddha, so that we could familiarize ourselves with the names that we chant in the mornings. And we were reflecting on the fact that I gave one talk, which was all about the virtues of unenlightenment. And the crux of the matter was that Ananda, it was because of Ananda's intercession that women were accepted into the ordination family of the Buddha. Because Ananda, as you know, Buddha's mother, stepmother,

[14:54]

very sincerely sought ordination and the Buddha refused her. But Ananda interceded on her behalf and then finally the Buddha relented and then we had the whole tradition of Bhiksunis and Buddhism. So I was mentioning that Ananda is famous in Zen for not being enlightened. That Ananda, even though he knew the teachings better than anyone, he actually could repeat all the teachings and knew them all really well, he was not awakened. And so, when they had the story of the first council, when they had the first council after the Buddha's passing and they wanted to keep track of all the teachings and write them down, Ananda, the only people who could come to the council were enlightened people. So they had this problem that Ananda had to come because he was the only one who knew all the teachings,

[15:59]

but he wasn't enlightened so he wasn't allowed to come. So they were desperate to get him enlightened so that he could come to the meeting, which they did at the last, the eleventh hour. So Ananda is known for this, known for being unenlightened and being also a very friendly and attractive person. So I was saying that it's a good thing that Ananda was unenlightened because if Ananda had been enlightened, maybe he would have had a peaceful abiding in relation to the non-ordination of women and he would have realized that the ordaining of women and the non-ordaining of women is equally the same, so why should we worry? But fortunately for us, Ananda was not enlightened and he thought it was important that women be ordained,

[17:03]

so he interceded on their behalf and women were ordained. So it's dubious to me. There's advantages and disadvantages, therefore, to enlightenment and Buddhahood, in this case, I would say, in my opinion. So anyway, this was one of my more famous talks on the virtues of unenlightenment. But this is also the case in this sutra. It's exactly, this is another virtue of Ananda's unenlightenment. It's exactly Ananda's unenlightenment that occasions this profound teaching because if Ananda had been enlightened, then Buddha would never have had to stir himself to give this teaching about the nature of mind so that Ananda would finally understand and not have these kind of problems anymore. So anyway, with that little bit of introduction, to give you a flavor for the sutra in the sense of what it's talking about, I'm going to ramble on and read some stuff for you and just make willy-nilly comments as we go along. And then allow, you know, maybe stop every now and then

[18:08]

and see if anybody has any questions or comments. So, Shurangama Sutra. Shurangama, we are told, is the word means the ultimate durability of all phenomena. Shurangama, the ultimate durability of all phenomena. So, of course, the durability of all phenomena is exactly the fact that phenomena, as we'll see, do and don't exist. Thus have I heard. There's about 15 pages of commentary on that first phrase, which I'll skip. Thus have I heard. At one time the Buddha dwelt in Shravasti in the sublime abode of the Jada Grove. And the Jada Grove is one of the most

[19:14]

important places that the Buddha taught. And there's a wonderful little story that we should all remember about the Jada Grove. One of Buddha's most important lay disciples was named Anadapindaka. And Anadapindaka, when he first heard about the Buddha, he became enormously enthusiastic and he wanted to make a big offering. So, he tried to figure out what did the Buddha need and the Buddha didn't have a place to stay. The monks were wandering, which was their lifestyle, but every now and then in the rainy season they would come together, but they didn't have a local place to come together. So, Anadapindaka thought, I will get a place for the Buddha. I will find a place. And he found this beautiful grove that was owned by the prince Jada, son of the king Prasenajita,

[20:17]

who figures into the story of the sutra. So, Anadapindaka said, I want to buy this grove to give to the Buddha. And prince Jada said, he didn't want to sell it. But instead of saying, no, I won't sell it, he made an absurd gesture. He said, well, of course I'll sell it. All you have to do is cover the entire grove with gold coins. It was acres and acres and acres of rolling hills and trees. Just cover the entire thing without leaving any piece uncovered with gold and that will be my price. Thinking, of course, it was like a joke. So, Anadapindaka proceeded to do exactly that. Cover the entire thing with gold. And Jada was totally flabbergasted that Anadapindaka had done this. And he said, well, you know, I don't want to sell this. I can't believe you did this, but I don't want to sell this. Anadapindaka said, I have to remind you that you are a prince

[21:18]

and that it is absolutely, you will fall from the grace of being a prince if you go back on your word. And you did say that. So, now you have to sell me the land. So, he did. But he said, however, you didn't put any gold on the trees. So, the trees still belong to me. And he thought that he had got the best of Anadapindaka and finally he decided that he would donate the trees himself. And because he donated the trees, it was called the Jada Grove, even though it was actually Anadapindaka who purchased the land at a great price. So, that's the legend of the Jada Grove and that's where many of the sutras say that the Buddha was teaching in the Jada Grove. So, there he was with a gathering of great bhikshus, twelve hundred fifty in all. All were great arhats without outflows,

[22:22]

sons of the Buddha, dwellers and maintainers. They had fully transcended all existence and were able to travel everywhere and to accomplish the awesome deportment. So, these were advanced students, very advanced. They were arhats who had completely conquered all their passions and totally self-possessed, without outflows, totally without fear, unafraid of death, not seeing any difference between life and death, with magical powers and deportment that would clearly show their attainment as soon as you looked at them. You could see that they were very special beings. They followed the Buddha in turning the wheel

[23:25]

and were wonderfully worthy of the request. Stern and pure in the Vinaya, the monastic rule, they were great exemplars in the three realms. That's the realm of form, this world, I mean the realm of desire, this world, Kamadhatu and the world of form, which is the first meditation realm and the formless realm is the second meditation realm. So, they mastered all that. Their limitless response bodies took living beings across and liberated them, pulling out and rescuing those of the future so they could transcend all the bonds of dust. So, they had Sambhogakaya bodies, magical bodies that could do Bodhisattva work, saving beings in all kinds of realms. And their names were Sariputra Mahamogalyana Makaustika Purnamaitrayani Kutra

[24:27]

Subhuti Upanishad and others. And Master Hua gives us some really wonderful legends about all these different characters, but I won't go into that. Moreover, limitless Pratyekas were beyond study and those with initial resolve came to where the Buddha was to join the Bhikshus Pravarana at the close of the summer retreat. So, besides these small number of very, very advanced disciples of the Buddha, there were other solitary practitioners who had completed their Dharma study and were fully attained. And there were also others who had just found in themselves the initial resolve, the initial commitment and vow to do the practice.

[25:28]

So, in other words, a variety of kinds of practitioners were all coming. It was the end of the summer retreat and they were about to have the ceremony of confession, which they would have on the full moon at the end of the summer retreat. And this was a beautiful custom in which basically the monastic rule was read and sometimes in groups, in pairs, or in small groups, or in the whole assembly or a combination of all those things, everybody had a chance to hear the monastic rule and to say, yes, I have kept this, no, I haven't kept this, or I didn't keep this very well, and confess to each other how they were doing. So it's actually an ancient, ancient tradition in Buddhism. Think about how wonderful this is in a way, that periodically there's a regular time when practitioners come together and tell each other quite honestly,

[26:28]

here's how we're doing, we have a commitment, we have a shared commitment together to do the practice and keep the rule, in this case the details of the monastic rule, and let's ask ourselves honestly how we're doing with it and help ourselves, help each other to commit ourselves more fully to it and go on. You do that at the city center? Yeah, we do it here too, actually. Well, we do it in the priesthood, in the priest meeting. In the city center, I understand they do it at everybody's happy ceremony. Yeah, it's actually a wonderful thing to do. Yes, I know. So, that's what they were about to do. There are a few rules. We're talking here about the monastic rule, which is very specific and very strict. As you know, in Zen, the 16 Bodhisattva precepts are very broad and very profound.

[27:31]

They're not lifestyle precepts, the 16 Bodhisattva precepts in Zen don't commit you to living a certain lifestyle. They commit you to a deep sense of renunciation and a deep commitment to ethical conduct. But with the understanding, I think the feeling in Zen practice is that the precepts are... their meaning and their application in individual circumstances are always koans, subject to the depths of our understanding. So that, in my opinion, it never makes sense in Zen to say, you broke the precept. You can say, I broke the precept. That makes sense, you see, because I can have an inner sense myself that I've broken the precept, and I can say that. But because it's such a matter of personal understanding, it's very difficult to look at somebody else

[28:33]

and say they've broken precepts. It may look like they have, but it's difficult to say. In the traditional monastic rule, it's very clear. And there are some precepts that bring about instant expulsion. And one of them is engaging in any kind of sexual activity, which is why Ananda's being on the point of being with a prostitute is such a serious thing. Anyway, so this ceremony is about to take place. Bodhisattvas from the ten directions who desired counsel in order to resolve the doubts in their minds were respectful and obedient to the awesome but compassionate one as they prepared to seek the secret meaning. The awesome but compassionate one refers, of course, to the Buddha. And when the Tathagata arranged his seat, sat quietly and peacefully, and for the sake of everyone in the assembly proclaimed the profound and mysterious,

[29:34]

the pure assembly at the banquet of Dharma obtained what they had never obtained before. The immortal's kalavinka sound pervaded the ten directions, and bodhisattvas as numerous as the sands of the Ganges gathered at the Bodhimanda with Manjushri as their leader. So the kalavinka is a sort of mythical bird that has a gorgeous sound, and this is likened to the voice of the Buddha. So beautiful was it to the hearers. And it was as if the Buddha's voice pervaded the ten directions, and all these bodhisattvas listened. So he gave a teaching. It doesn't say what it was, but it was very moving to everyone, and they all appreciated it. Then King Prasenajit, for the sake of his father, the late king, arranged on the day of mourning a vegetarian feast, and invited the Buddha

[30:35]

to the side rooms of the palace. He welcomed the Tathagata in person with a vast array of superb delicacies of unsurpassed wonderful flavors, and himself invited the great bodhisattvas. So I think this means that the day of mourning is probably the Seghati ceremony, because that started in Buddhist time, as many of you know, when Maudgalyayana's mother died. So anyway, this was a very common thing. People would invite the Buddha to their house for a feast, and he would go. And to this day, it's a very odd combination of things where monks are austere. They only eat one meal a day, monks and nuns. But more often than not, that one meal is an unbelievable party, because people want to make lavish offerings, and the more lavish, the more you show your appreciation.

[31:36]

So they do this today for monks and nuns, so much more for the Buddha. So the Buddha was eating a big feast probably most of the time. In the city were also elders and laypeople who were also prepared to feed the sangha at the same time, and they stood waiting for the Buddha to come and receive offerings. The Buddha commanded Manjushri, and now we know, with the mention of Manjushri, we're clearly in the realms of, you call it, extraterrestrial, magical, imaginative realms, because Manjushri was never, nobody ever thought that Manjushri was a flesh-and-blood character. He's a perfect Bodhisattva character type. So the Buddha commanded Manjushri to assign the Bodhisattvas and Arhats to receive offerings

[32:38]

from the various vegetarian hosts. Only Ananda, who having accepted a special invitation earlier, had traveled far and had not yet returned, was late for the apportioning of the sangha, for the giving up of food amongst the sangha. Ananda wasn't there. No senior seated one or acarya was with him, so he was returning alone on the road. Already not good. He shouldn't be alone. He should be with a brother or sister monk in case of trouble. Would it have been okay for him to be walking with a nun alone? No. No, he should have been with another monk. That's the rule. Because you just said either the monk or the acarya. Oh, acarya means teacher. On that day, he had received no offerings, and so at the appropriate time,

[33:39]

Ananda took up his begging bowl and as he traveled through the city, begged in successive order. So he went from house to house without skipping any houses. As he first began to beg, he thought to himself that down to the very last danapati donor, you know, offer of food, who would be his vegetarian host, he would not question whether they were clean or unclean, whether they were kshatriyas of honorable name or chandalas, like untouchables. While practicing equality and compassion, he would not merely select the lowly, but was determined to perfect all living beings' limitless merit and virtue. Ananda already knew that the Tathagata, the world-honored one, had admonished Subhuti and Mahakasyapa for being arhats whose hearts were not fair and equal, and he regarded with respect the Tathagata's instructions in impartiality

[34:42]

to save everyone from doubt and slander. So, this is interesting, the Master Hua comments here and tells us that Subhuti liked good food. Subhuti, you know, was the arhat associated with the understanding of emptiness, which is why in the Diamond Sutra, Subhuti is the interlocutor because Subhuti is the emptiness guy. So, it's interesting to note that the emptiness guy had a taste for delicate food. So, his hand was usually given by the wealthy people. So, Subhuti, his idea was, see, so I'm a Buddhist monk, you give me food and I eat, that's nice, but you get a bigger benefit than I get. This is the way it works,

[35:43]

because you get to make the offering, so that nourishes your wholesome roots and gives you good karma for the future. So, Subhuti's idea was that, it was a little bit like Ronald Reagan trickle-down economics theory. His idea was that the wealthy have a lot more power and everything, so they could use more merit, give them more merit, so that they can benefit others with their extra merit. So, that's why it's much better to beg from the wealthy. You shouldn't really waste too much time begging from the poor, because they will not get as great a stock of merit, because they'll be giving less good food, they won't get as much merit, and then they can't really do that much with the merit, because they're only poor people. So, it's better for everybody. This was Subhuti, this is, what do they call this, cashewistry or something like that, in the religion. So, this was Subhuti's idea. So, not for his own appetites, but for the benefit of all sentient beings, he only begged at the homes of the wealthy.

[36:45]

And the Buddha criticized him for this, and said, no, no, no, you should beg impartially. Now, Ma Kashapa, on the other hand, our Zen ancestor, you know, Ma Kashapa's claim to fame is, as Subhuti was the great master of emptiness, Ma Kashapa was the master of ascetic practices. So, Zen is really very, has an ascetic kind of flavor, even though the teachings are very Mayanistic and expansive. The style of Zen is very austere, which is why Ma Kashapa was selected fictitiously to be the carrier of the Zen tradition from Buddha. Anyway, Ma Kashapa had the opposite theory of Subhuti, because Ma Kashapa had a taste for austerities. Now, one of the little known facts about austerities is that austerities are very thrilling. Did you know?

[37:46]

Anybody here an ascetic? Asceticism is very thrilling, and you get a big kind of high on asceticism. And so there were all kinds of guards against the monks being too ascetic. They actually had a list of, what do you call it, permitted ascetic practices. And ascetic practices that were not permitted. So that the monks, most monks actually, the truth is, have a taste for asceticism. Otherwise, why be a monk, right? You're into it. So why not do it even more? So, like, you know, let's really have a very strict rule. You know, like, we won't, let's sleep on a board, you know, for two hours a night, this kind of thing. So you can really get into it and get more and more inflated and excited and high off of your asceticism. So Maudgalyayana was a little bit, Mahakasyapa was a little bit like that. And his idea was, only beg from the poorest of the poor people.

[38:48]

And he had, of course, the opposite theory of Subuddhi. His idea was, well, you know, if you beg from them, it's really good because you're giving them the merit. They really need it. They're poor people. They should be getting more merit than the rich people. You know, they need it. So we should never go to the rich people, only the poor people. So the Buddha also criticized Mahakasyapa for that. You shouldn't only go to the rich. You shouldn't only go to the poor. Favor one over the other. You should just go each house. Of course, now that everybody lives in a segregated life, it depends on what neighborhood, right? So this is sort of assuming a world in which one rich house, one poor house, one rich house, one poor house, but you don't find that anymore. Now it's like you go to a neighborhood and everybody's rich or poor. So you need like a car to zip around one rich house and one poor house and one other rich house and another poor house. Anyway, so the point is

[39:51]

that Ananda was being very careful to beg in the proper way. Having crossed the city moat, he walked slowly through the outer gates, his manner stern and proper, as he honored with propriety the method of obtaining food. So monks had very strict rules of comportment. You should walk in a certain way and keep your eyes downcast and be very dignified. Monks were expected to be dignified. Who's going to feed an undignified monk, right? So you have to be dignified. You want to get fed, you better at least look like a monk on the outside, not on the inside. So he was paying attention to that. At that time, because Ananda was begging in sequential order, he passed by a house of prostitution and was waylaid by a powerful artifice. By means of a mantra of the Kapila religion, formerly of the Brahma heaven,

[40:52]

the daughter of Matangi drew him into an impure mat. So I'm not quite sure what an impure mat is, but you get the basic idea. And the commentary does tell you that Ananda was very attractive. This was happening to Ananda actually quite a bit. There's many stories. Nothing more attractive than a holy monk, I think. At least this is what happened to Ananda. He was constantly being enticed by women who were always falling in love with him. And this was the case here. And she wanted to marry him and she said to her mother, and mother said, but he's a monk. And she said, well, so what? Do something about it. So she gave him this mantra. With her licentious body, she stroked and rubbed him until he was on the verge of destroying the precept substance. So you can see. Now, it was believed,

[41:54]

it's a very fascinating discussion actually, which I once researched this years ago. And this is a really interesting thing. There was the idea that when you took vows, that in the taking of the vow there was some sort of a, almost like physical change in the substrate of your cellular existence. That's why it says, the precept substance. So Buddhists believe, and when you think about it, especially in the light of our present day, very far out in the scientific knowledge, it actually isn't that far out an idea. The thought that making a very firm commitment and vow, which is then sealed with various empowerments and ritualistic stuff, actually changes you. That it's not a trivial thing, it's actually some sort of a cellular change. We think of it as an emotional change, I don't know what, a spiritual change. But it was believed that there was actually a change in substance.

[43:00]

Of course, you know, substance is empty, so you could say, what does that mean? But anyway, in the Kabhidharma Kosha it says this. And so, it was almost like he was now in danger of changing his form of life. He had entered, when you enter the order, you change your form of life in some way. You become like another kind of a creature. And now he was in danger of basically cutting that off. And so this is really, you know, a big problem. The Tathagata, knowing Ananda was being taken advantage of by the indecent artifice, finished the meal and immediately returned. The king, great officials, elders and lay people followed along after the Buddha, desiring to hear the essentials of Dharma. Then the World Honored One emitted a hundred rays of jeweled and fearless light from his crown, you know, his little topknot. Within the light appeared a thousand-petaled precious lotus, upon which was seated a transformation body Buddha in full lotus posture, proclaiming a spiritual mantra.

[44:02]

So, in the meditation realms, which is like another, the realms of form, which is considered a different world from this world, imagine a way of life, a way of thought in which you believed that these mental realms that you actually could enter through meditation practice were absolutely real worlds, as real as this world, with different sort of laws of gravity and physics and all that. And other kinds of beings lived in those realms and what happened in those realms was effective in matter. So the Buddha then caused something to happen in one of those form realms. He caused sort of a, this is the Sambhogakaya body of the Buddha, right? It's the body of the Buddha that exists in these realms, in these meditative realms. And these are the bodies that are depicted in Buddhist art. Buddhist art is not depicting a human being

[45:05]

called Shakyamuni Buddha. It's depicting an ideal being living in a world of pure form in all the thangkas and drawings and paintings of those beings. And sometimes, like if you look at the, when you clean the incense bowl, I think this is right, I forget now, but I think the incense bowl in the Zen, though, and you see it in other depictions, will depict the disciples of the Buddha who are like human beings. And they get old and they get cranky and they often look like they've been through hell and back. And then, on that incense bowl, you see those, some beings like that. Then you see, next to them, these celestial beings from the form realms who are never, don't get old, they're always like 20 or something like that. At the peak and the perfection of human beauty, in the pink of life. And they always have big, beautiful hair

[46:09]

and ornaments and jewelry and all this. There are no monks in those realms. The Buddha also appears with a topknot and colorful garments and so forth and so on. So anyway, that's all I want to say. But the Buddha causes this to happen and this lotus flower appears and this Buddha on there is reciting this mantra and for the purpose, as we'll see, of saving Ananda. He commanded Manjushri, who was also a creature from this realm, to take the mantra and go provide protection. And when the evil mantra was extinguished, to lend support and to encourage Ananda and Matangi's daughter to return to where the Buddha was. So the daughter, too, because she's not an evil person or anything, it's not that we'll get rid of her, like what she did, what a nasty... It's like she also was under a spell, right? Anybody who does things that are negative is basically under a spell, right? A confused karma.

[47:09]

So nothing wrong with them, but let's stop them from doing their works that are so harmful. He said, OK, I've been studying all this time. Because the teachings are very intoxicating, right? They're interesting. They're colorful, they're wonderful. And Ananda loved the teachings and was a great genius of the teachings, but he just didn't have time to meditate and he wasn't interested. So now, having just almost had this terrible thing happen, now he says, OK, now I'm finally ready to meditate. This is how it is in real life, too, right? OK, now I'm ready to meditate. After all that, now I'm finally... OK, I guess I'd better meditate now. And that's the time when you're really in deep trouble. Then, all of a sudden, meditation. Aha, meditation. Ah, yes, yes. Now I understand. Now I understand. Otherwise, it's like, meditate? Why? At that time, bodhisattvas as numerous as the sands of the Ganges,

[48:15]

great arhats, pratyekas, and others from the ten directions were also present. Pleased at the opportunity to listen, they withdrew silently to their seats to receive the sagely instruction. So now the Buddha is going to... This is now the beginning of the sutra. The Buddha is now going to teach about this mantra and the teaching that goes with it. And so he says, basically, to Ananda, OK, now, here goes. You'd better listen. And now starts the exhaustive philosophical dialogue that the Buddha is going to engage in with Ananda and others about the nature of mind. So I'll read the first part of this and see how far I get here. This is taking longer than expected. Could you just say what the three realms are again?

[49:16]

The three realms are... The first one is the kamadhatu. Dhatu means realm. Kamadhatu. And the kamadhatu is this world. It's the world of karma. It's the world of what we would call physical matter and all the limitations of physical matter. In the kamadhatu, there's desire, there's food, and there's going to the toilet. You have that in the kamadhatu. In the rupadhatu, the world of form, the world in which all these bodhisattvas and celestial beings operate, the world that we enter when we enter the concentration states, there's no going to the toilet, there's no food. There's no sex, only mental. The gods are just constantly enjoying. And they eat by smell. That's it. That's lunch. So this is an idealized...

[50:22]

Actually, it's interesting. It's not so different, I think, in many ways, from Plato's idea. He had the same idea, the world of form. Plato had even the same terminology, more or less. Except that Plato did not identify this with meditation practice. Why is this formless? The formless realm is a realm in which basically there's nothing. There's no objects. So in the formless realm, which is another meditative state, but it's considered to be distinctly different. You enter the world of form, and then when your concentration deepens, it crosses a line. And then you enter a trance state in which there is no experience, basically. That's a formless realm. Is that dharmadhatu? No, that's arupadhatu. No rupa, no form, formless. Rupa means form, so there's kamadhatu, rupadhatu,

[51:23]

and arupadhatu. Those are the three realms. Three worlds. So let's just give you a sense of the beginning of this, and then I'll skip forward to some of the more crucial moments. But I wanted to set the tone and give you the feeling for the beginning of the sutra. The Buddha said to Ananda, you and I are of the same family, because they were cousins. You and I are of the same family and share the affection of a natural relationship. At the time of your initial resolve to practice, what were the outstanding characteristics which you saw in my dharma that caused you to suddenly cast aside the deep kindness and love found in the world? So in other words, what was it about me, Ananda, that made you take this enormous step of becoming a monk?

[52:26]

You must have been attracted to something in my dharma. What was it that attracted you? Ananda said, I saw the Tathagata's 32 characteristics which were so supremely wonderful, so incomparable that his entire body had a shimmering transparence just like that of crystal. I often thought to myself that these characteristics cannot be born of desire and love. Why? The vapors of desire are coarse and murky. From foul and putrid intercourse comes a turbid mixture of pus and blood which means sperm and egg is what's meant there, which cannot give off such a magnificent, pure and brilliant concentration of purple-golden light. And so I thirstily gazed upward, followed the Buddha and let the hair fall from my head. Which is how the early ordinations were quite wonderful. Somebody would say,

[53:27]

well, I don't know what they would say. Nothing, maybe. And the Buddha would say, come forth, O Ananda. And Ananda would take one step or something and then all their hair would fall off immediately and robes would appear on them. That's what they say in the sutras. I don't know how true that is, but that's what it says. So Ananda was attracted by this vision of the Buddha's very body as being not of this world and saying that I could see that the ordinary flesh and blood could not have produced something like this so that's why I easily let go of the world. The flesh and blood world, I could see that this was much better by comparison. And then there is this sense that from the perspective of the world you think, how could people become monks

[54:29]

and living in these restrictions and rules, it's terrible. But from the standpoint of inside of that it's like, oh my God, we're living in this rarefied heavenly realm beyond all these worldly dusts. So this is a perfect life. So, that's Ananda's answer to the question. Buddha says, very good Ananda, you should all know that all living beings are continually born and continually die simply because they do not know the everlasting true, the everlasting. Now we thought about impermanence. But beings are born and die because they do not know the everlasting true mind, the bright substance of the pure nature. Instead they engage in false thinking. It has been so since time without beginning.

[55:29]

Their thoughts are not true and so the wheel keeps turning. So that's what a surprising thing. So Buddha is saying that the mind is actually everlasting and somehow totally true and unmoving and without duration. Beings don't see this and they engage in false thinking which somehow creates this world of flesh and blood with all its imperfections and its impermanence and its disease and limitation and so on and so forth. It's because of the thoughts of the beings which are erroneous in relation to the nature of reality that this world appears to be what it is. Now you wish to uninvestigate, the Buddha goes on, now you wish to investigate the unsurpassed Bodhi and actually

[56:32]

discover your nature. You should answer my questions with a straightforward mind because that is exactly the way that the Tathagatas of the Ten Directions escaped birth and death. Their minds were all straightforward and since their minds and words were consistently that way from the beginning through the intermediate stages to the end, they were never in the least evasive. So he's just saying, I'm going to ask you some questions, tell me the truth, just tell me the straight truth here and we'll figure this out. So, Ananda, now I ask you, at the time of your initial resolve which arose in response to the Tathagata's 32 characteristics, the 32 marks of the Buddha, there's a list of them, the top knot, the years, different things, what was it that saw those

[57:36]

characteristics and delighted in them? What saw those characteristics? Ananda said, World Honored One, this is the way I experienced the delight that I felt on seeing the Buddha. I used my mind and eyes. Makes sense, right? I used my mind and my eyes. Because my eyes saw the Tathagata's outstanding characteristics, my mind gave rise to delight. That is why I became resolved and wished to remove myself from birth and death. Buddha said, it is as you say, that experience of delight actually occurs because of your mind and eyes. If you do not know where your mind and eyes are, you will not be able to conquer the wearisome dust,

[58:36]

meaning the world, the suffering of the world. What does it mean if you don't know where your mind and eyes are? Well, this is the crux of the matter. So the next passages are going to tell you that. So, in other words, he's raising the question, you say that it was because of your mind and your eyes. Now we're going to investigate where exactly is your mind and where exactly is your eyes. And this is somewhat reminiscent of the story of the second ancestor. My mind is suffering. Show me your mind. Remember? It's very similar. And that's where that exact story is based on, this passage, I'm sure, in the Shurangama Sutra. For example, the Buddha goes on, when a king's country is invaded by thieves and he sends out his troops to suppress and banish them, the troops must know where the thieves are. Yeah.

[59:38]

It is the fault of your mind and eyes that you flow and turn. I am now asking you specifically about your mind and eyes. Where are they now? So, the analogy of the king and the thieves is not an accidental analogy. Your mind and your senses are like thieves. They are robbing you of your true world, your true life, because you don't understand them. You don't understand what the eyes are and what the mind is. Now, if you send out an army to capture a thief, you have to know where the thief is. So now we're going to investigate where is your mind and where are your eyes. Of course, we all know where our minds are, where our eyes are, don't we? But let's say now, let's say we really know. We're like Ananda. We have the same ideas Ananda has, I'm sure.

[60:42]

Except Ananda can see. Magical Buddhas, we don't see those things, most of us. Maybe some of you. I don't see such things myself. Ananda said to the Buddha, World Honored One, all the ten kinds of living beings in the world alike maintain that the conscious mind dwells within the body. And, as I regard the Tathagata's blue lotus flower eyes, they too are on the Buddha's face. So you ask me where the mind and the eyes are? It's very simple, Buddha. The mind is in the body, the eyes are right here under the eyebrows. That's where they keep them, and that's where they are. It's the same in you, same in me. So why are you asking me these stupid questions, Buddha? I don't want to say that, but where is this going here? So, I now observe... Is this going on the talk? Yes. I now observe, as Ananda says, that these prominent organs, four kinds of defiling objects,

[61:45]

are on my face, and so too my conscious mind actually is within my body. The Buddha said to Ananda, You are now sitting in the Tathagata's lecture hall looking at the Jada Grove. You're looking at the Jada Grove. Where is it at present? World Honored One, this many-storied pure lecture hall is in the garden of the benefactor of the solitary, which is the name of Ananda Pindaka. At present, the Jada Grove is in fact outside the hall. Ananda, the Buddha says, As you are now in the hall, what do you see first? World Honored One, here in the hall I first see the Tathagata, next I see the Great Assembly, and from there, as I gaze outward, I see the Grove and the Garden. Ananda, why is it you are able to see the Grove and the Garden as you look at them?

[62:45]

World Honored One, since the doors and windows of this great lecture hall have been thrown open wide, I can be inside the hall and look out and see into the distance. The Buddha said to Ananda, It is as you say. When one is in the lecture hall and the doors and windows are wide open, one can see far into the Garden and Grove. Could there be someone in the hall who does not see the Tathagata and yet sees outside the hall? So, you know, get the picture? You can look through Tathagata sitting like by the door, but you don't see him. You see only outside the hall. You can't see anything inside the hall. Is that possible? No. World Honored One, to be in the hall and not see the Tathagata, who is in the hall, and yet see the Grove and the fountains, this is impossible. And the Buddha says, Ananda, you are like that too. Your mind is capable

[63:50]

of understanding everything thoroughly. Now, if your present mind, which thoroughly understands everything, were in your body, as you just said it was, then you should be aware first of what is inside your body. Can every living beings who first see inside their bodies before they observe things outside? So, by the same analogy, you should be able to see your stomach and your intestines and all this, just like you can see the Tathagata in the outside. How come if the mind is in the body, how come the mind is not able to perceive the inside of the body? That's the idea. How come you can't see other people? How come you can't see your own large intestine? How come you can't have some cognizance of it? You may have vague sensation maybe, but you really don't know. Like, who even knows? Like, where is your liver? Who even knows where it is? Maybe you know where it is, but you can't feel it, you can't see it, you can't hear it.

[64:54]

So, if the mind is inside the body, how come it has no idea what the hell is going on inside the body? It makes no sense, Buddha says. Even if you cannot see your heart, liver, spleen and stomach still, the growing of your nails and hair, the twist of your sinews and the throb of your pulse should be clearly understood. Why don't you perceive these things? If you cannot perceive what is inside at all, how can you perceive what is outside? Therefore, you should know that you state the impossible when you say that the aware and knowing mind is in the body. You are wrong. The mind is not in the body. Now, I suppose that if we were smart magicians, maybe we would say, well, wait a minute, that's not a very good argument. It doesn't prove that the mind is not in the body. But maybe it does, I don't know. But anyway, for the purposes of the sutra, the idea is that it proves that the mind is not in the body.

[65:57]

Now we completely know that the mind is not in the body. And actually, the mind isn't in the body. It isn't, because you can't find it. They try to dissect the brains, they find brains, but the brain isn't the mind, right? Otherwise, a dead person would be thinking and dancing, but they're not. They have a brain, like if you put a dead person who has a perfectly good eye, you could take the eye out of a dead person and put it in another person and it would work, right? Like they haven't been dead too long. And they have a brain, right? But if you put that dead person up against, take them to the movies and put them in a movie, they're not going to see the movie, right? They have eyes, they have a brain, right? So if the brain was in the body, how come they can't see the movie? I mean, if the mind were in the body. Because the mind is not in the body. It's really not correct to say that consciousness is somehow like inside the body. So whether or not you buy Buddha's logic here,

[66:58]

I think it's true, right? That the mind, it's not really right to say that the mind is like inside the body. So Buddha's, let's just say, Buddha just proved this. So Ananda, like, he's awakened on this point. Oh yeah, okay, yeah, yeah. Yes, I realize now, Ananda says, that now that I heard this, I see that my mind is actually outside my body. Now I know. Why? For example, a lamp alight in a room will certainly illumine the inside of the room first and only then will it pour through the doorway to reach the recesses of the hall. For all living beings who do not see within their bodies but only see outside them, it is as if the lighted lamp were placed outside the room so that it cannot illumine the room. So now I know that since I can see the outside but I can't see the inside, my mind must be outside my body.

[67:59]

Thank you, Buddha, for straightening me out on this point. This principle is certainly clear. It is absolutely beyond all doubt in exactly the Buddha's entire meaning. And so it isn't wrong, is it? He says, is it? The Buddha said to Ananda, All these bhikshus have just followed me to the city of Sravasti to beg in sequence for food rolled into balls and they have returned to the Jada Grove. I have already finished eating, but consider the bhikshus. When one person eats, does everyone get full? Ananda answered, No, World Honored One. Why? These bhikshus are arhats, but their individual lives differ. How could one person cause everyone to be full? The Buddha told Ananda, If your mind, which understands, knows, sees and is aware,

[69:01]

were actually outside your body, as you have just said, your body and mind would be mutually exclusive and would have no relationship to one another. Therefore, if you ate, somebody else could get full. If your mind is outside your body, why would you get full when you ate? The body would be unaware of what the mind perceives and the mind would not perceive the awareness within the body. Anyway, this goes on for the rest of this volume, this conversation. Every time Ananda says the mind is here, the Buddha says, No, that's not right. Basically, the Buddha refutes all explanations of where the mind could possibly be. He says the mind isn't anywhere. And even when you try to say the mind exists, you can't say the mind exists. If you say it doesn't exist, you can't say it doesn't exist. Any assertions about the mind from a dualistic standpoint

[70:04]

are going to be disproven by the Buddha. So it turns out that we have no idea what our minds are and what perception is. And as the sutra unfolds, the Buddha is going to show that this very indefinable mind only operates, it's functioning, only occurs through our senses, through our six senses. So in other words, we are, you could say it this way, we are the tools of the limitless, eternal Buddha who is talking and walking, seeing, hearing and thinking through our activity. So we're always in touch with this, except we've reduced it by our confused thinking to something very small

[71:06]

called me. So there are many other, the sutra consists of many, many very, very long dialogues. This goes on, like I said, for some time. And there are many other, usually there's a conclusion and then another, something else happens and then another big long discussion like that. But that's the burden of it. That's the essence of it. So, gee, I was going to do three volumes tonight and I sort of more or less did one, but it's okay. But I'll read you just in conclusion here and then we'll leave the last few minutes for comments. Case 94 of the Blue Cliff Record is this, the following. It's a direct quote from the Shurangama Sutra. And the case is, the Shurangama scripture says, When I do not see,

[72:09]

why do you not see my not seeing? If you see my not seeing, naturally that is not the characteristic of not seeing. If you don't see my not seeing, it is naturally not a thing. How could it not be you? Is the kind of stuff that you all know in the sutra. So it's a kind of a wonderful sort of mental yoga. As I often say, I feel that the Buddhist teaching is not an assertion of anything. It's not a belief or a doctrine that is asserting anything. It's actually a kind of intellectual

[73:12]

untying process. In other words, we by our natural karma as human beings having the minds that we have naturally have mixed up thinking that binds us. We have to become free of that thinking. And the Buddhist teaching is a counter, is like the mirror opposite of our confused thinking. So if we look in that mirror, the confusion of our thinking reverses. And we can be free of our confusion and see things as they are. This takes some understanding intellectually, like reading a sutra, but as we found out already from Ananda, it also takes direct experience and direct vision of it through meditation practice. So anyway, it's actually not that complicated a thing in the end. You could say,

[74:16]

well, one of the analogies I sometimes use is I remember a long time ago when I was a substitute teacher in the 8th grade which is a very hard thing to do because 8th graders are tough especially on substitutes. Especially when you show up and the teacher sort of left precipitously and there's no plan. So there was this book there and I picked it up and started reading it to these kids. And there's this book called Sounder. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. It's a young people's book. And there was this page I opened to randomly with this wonderful description of a sharecropper's cabin. And this is like way out in the country surrounded by cotton fields pitch dark. No street lights, no houses, nothing.

[75:24]

So in this sharecropper's house there's a lamp. And they're sitting around like a kerosene lamp or something. They're sitting around the lamp talking. And the little boy, he's the hero of the story, little African American kid and the son of a sharecropper, he walks outside the house and there's a circle of light from the lamp. And he walks out to the edge of the circle of light and he goes beyond it. And he's not looking at the house now. He's looking out into the distance and it's like pitch black. So this is how our life is. Our life is this vast darkness. And we light a little lamp. And the world that we live in is this little cabin lit by the little lamp. But actually it is this big darkness which we just put a little lamp on. And we don't know

[76:27]

that we're living in this giant thing. Just we put a lamp on. We think that this little house is like the entire universe. We think that this is it. So naturally we're crashing into things where we feel like there's not enough space. There's nothing in here. I mean this is really terrible. We have a lot of problems in this little house. But if we recognize that the little house is really this vastness then even if we were inside the house we would feel that spaciousness all the time. So that's really what it's pointing to. And when you read seven volumes of these kind of arguments you begin to get it how thoroughly you are by your thinking keeping yourself in that little house and not looking out the window even. So even though I don't want this to seem too abstract

[77:27]

or too what's the word? Rarified I think. This is really just and we know about the darkness this is not just a fantasy because we know how mysterious it all is like how could there be a child comes preposterous thing how could this be? Where did this come from? When someone dies where do they go? How could that be? This makes no sense from the point of view of all that we understand this makes no sense at all. Of course we understand the science of how babies are born but do we really know how that really takes place? Why does that happen in that way? The science doesn't explain it. When you ask the next question you finally come to the last question that's not answerable. Just like we could say

[78:29]

I was talking to a lady where was I? Where was I lately? Mexico. Yeah, I was in Mexico and I was talking about the 12-fold chain of causation and I was saying that the cause of death is birth that is actually the cause of death is birth. Every other cause of death is completely incidental where there's birth, definitely there's death there may not have to be cancer or whatever but there's going to be death as long as there's birth. So one of the women in the retreat was a physician and she said I think that next time I fill out a death certificate I might write, you have to write, there's various lines cause of death, when did this cause come into play how long was it? So she said I think I'll write cause of death, life, birth and how long did this condition persist and I'll write down the age

[79:33]

of the patient and see what happens. So what I'm saying is that when it comes to these mysteries which we conveniently don't pay much attention to because we can't understand them we know then that this is true that what we think the mind is, what we think our life is can't be what it is, it just can't be because just as the Buddha shows in the sutra, it is really illogical that our very thinking and our very conception of what our life is really does not make sense it doesn't hold water, except in this very small room in the small room it's fine but when it comes to the ultimate questions of meaning of our life and death clearly it doesn't hold up and so Buddha makes this point many times in the sutra

[80:33]

So I guess I will give everyone here an honorable chance to not come to class anymore given the limitations of the class so I guess what it's going to turn out is that each class will be a little bit like a bedtime story since you don't have a text it'll be like hearing a bedtime story and then we'll all get a little sleepy and then we'll go to bed but if you given the problems here so forth, I'll understand if you don't want to come since you didn't know what you were getting yourself into now you know This was pretty close Oh yeah, was it the beginning of the text? Yeah, everything you were reading so far Well maybe you could xerox, it's probably got so many pages

[81:42]

Oh, it's long Well, but maybe that's good though maybe let me think This is in the bookstore, it's only $20 cheaper than $60 It's this much of a book Well maybe I'll try to get a hold of that myself and then I can try to focus on those parts that are in the book It's 108 to 276 and they say that's only a third of the entire length Oh boy, that's terrific, I had no idea that was in there That's a very old book Yeah Yeah Okay, well I'll try to take a look at that and see if I can try to focus on those parts There's a wonderful part that I want to do next week about the king himself talks about aging and seeing

[82:44]

and there's a big discussion about that Norman? Maybe one possibility would be that we could interweave some discussion around some of the themes Yes, we should Usually in the beginning of a class I tend to set the tone but yes, we will have more discussion going on so long I think now we have a pretty good sense of what the sutra feels like and what the scope of it is so yeah, as we go along we should stop and see what discussion there is Or even if it was possible to demark the passages to pass the book around There are different voices reading it Yeah, okay, I'll try to do that next time

[83:49]

I'll think about how we can do that May I answer

[84:02]

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